Lumion 2.5: a Beautiful, Simple Architectural and Visualization
Tool

"The graphics engine is designed for
instant visualization. Just import your models and Lumion makes
them look good. No effort. No waiting. "Theater mode" allows you to
us it as a 3D viewer for an easy fly-through of complex 3D models
in real-time"

Act-3D is a Netherlands-based company that is focused
on developing real-time 3D visualization and authoring tools.
Quest3D and Lumion are the two main applications created by Act-3D.
We will be looking at Lumion 2.5 in this review. And, although the
primary market for this application is architectural visualization,
it will appeal to a broader user base because of it's beautiful
real-time engine, huge model/materials library and excellent
community support.

Lumion 2.5
comes in 3 different versions: Lumion Free, Lumion and Lumion Pro. The Lumion
Free version, despite limitations and watermarked output, is still
a very robust application and is highly recommended, especially for
machinima filmmakers. Lumion Pro is Act-3D's flagship application
which contains over 1800 models, 500 materials, special movie
effects, higher resolution output and advanced functionality.
Standard Lumion comes with slightly fewer models/materials and
slightly reduced capabilities. Both the Standard and Pro versions
are for commercial use and are priced at $2,400 and $4,800
respectively, while the Free version cannot be used for commercial
purposes but is a free download. Full breakdown of the difference
between the three versions is available here.

Note that Act-3D also makes available a free educational edition of the standard version of Lumion.
Lumion Pro Educational (with all the Pro goodies) costs $480.

Lumion 2.5 Work-flow

One of the best features of Lumion is how easy it is to use. You
start by choosing one of 9 basic environments, including an empty
one where you start from scratch. Then you just drag-n-drop the
elements of a scene you want to create. Lumion also comes with 9
examples of high quality environments that you can examine or use
as the basis for your own creation.

The content library is quite large and well laid out using small
images of each item. It's a snap to position, rotate and scale your
items as you see fit. You can also import common object formats
like obj, CAD formats and fbx. Changing material types is simple,
too. Grab a material and simply add it or paint it into your scene.
Changing clouds, time of day or weather is also easily done using
simple sliders. Finally, you can choose several camera positions
and Lumion creates the camera move for you. And remember, ALL of
this is in real-time so you can see exactly how your actions are
affecting the scene.

You can output your scene, or still picture, to a variety of
common formats depending upon which version of Lumion you are
using. And the output is beautiful. Lumion's second best feature is
the fact that the rendering engine is gorgeous.

Conclusion

Lumion 2.5 is a pleasure to work with. Unlike several other
applications that take considerable time for scene creation, Lumion
lives up to its "instant visualization" pitch. The
graphic interface is so easy to use that you can create an
attractive scene in less than an hour complete with environmental
dynamics like sun, weather and animated models. And, as I've
mentioned, the visual quality is wonderful.

Lumion 2.5 also allows for an interactive pipeline with
applications like Sketch-Up, 3ds Max and Revit. I was able to
import a variety of models into my Lumion 2.5 scene and adjust them
without a problem. In fact, working with Lumion 2.5 was one of the
most enjoyable experiences I've had with an application. The fun
factor is very high and you can end up spending many hours simply
playing with combinations of models, materials and
environments.

Lumion 2.5 is focused to the architectural and visualization
market, but I can see it having an impact in the product
advertising market as well. This market has moved from traditional
photography to 3D, and with Lumion's ease of use and huge variety
of environments, I can see advertisers putting this application to
good use.

Of course, the price of Lumion 2.5 is geared towards the
professional market and this will inhibit some 3D animated
filmmakers. But, the free version with its watermarked output,
could still be of interest, especially to the machinima community.
Once Act-3D is established in the market (and I have no doubts that
they will be), I hope they will consider developing a filmmaker's
license where video output will not be watermarked.

Lumion does have room for growth. Some functions improving your
ability to adjust animated objects need to be addressed. You are
also dependent upon the quality of your graphics card for real-time
functionality. This means a relatively expensive GPU is essential.
I also think a browser-based export format for visualizations you
create would be better than the Theater mode Lumion has
provided.

Lumion 2.5 is highly recommended for anyone interested in
high-quality visualizations, but don't want to spend too much time.
Its visual quality is often stunning, the community is active and
growing and the company is eager to please. You really can't beat a
combination like that for successful business.

New lighting in the upcoming Lumion 3.0

Lumion 3.0 is coming

While writing this review, I learned that a major update to
Lumion is coming this month (November, 2012). Lumion 3.0 addresses
some of my crits from this review and expands the program
significantly. Global Illumination, 3D sounds and Video Textures
are just a few of the new additions to Lumion 3.0. I'll be covering
this release in the next few months and perhaps add an interview as
well.

Notes: My thanks to Truls at Act-3D for making
Lumion available for review. You can find the hardware requirements
for Lumion 2.5 here. At this point in time, Lumion 2.5 is only
available on the Windows platform.

Ricky
Grove [gToon], Staff Columnist with the Renderosity Front
Page News. Ricky Grove is a bookstore clerk at the best bookstore
in Los Angeles, the Iliad Bookshop. He's also an actor and
machinima filmmaker. He lives with author, Lisa Morton, and three
very individual cats. Ricky is into Hong Kong films, FPS shooters,
experimental anything and reading, reading, reading. You can catch
his blog here.

November 12, 2012

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